


Drive the Dark Things Away

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Series: The World That You Need [12]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Book: The Vor Game, M/M, Phone Sex, Scars, Space Battles, Table Sex, Ulcers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-18 10:05:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3565667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A triptych set during <em>The Vor Game</em>, in which Aral and Jole look after each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Iulia, Petra, Ellen Fremedon and commodorified for their help with this! 
> 
> Ave imperatrix, iosituri te salutant.

Arkady barely spoke to his mother during the first weeks after the Emperor's disappearance on Komarr. He barely spoke to anyone; he was almost continuously on-duty, helping to maintain the carefully nonchalant choreography of the Prime Minister's working hours and also helping to coordinate the decoy emperor's trip to Vorkosigan Surleau. The emperor's own private secretary, Kanzian, had been detained by ImpSec after his master's disappearance, and came home more in need of a quiet holiday than anyone; he was bundled off to Vorkosigan Surleau and the Countess went around tight-lipped for days.

Kanzian, like Arkady, had had the fast-penta allergy induced when he took his present post. ImpSec had had to put their questions the old-fashioned way. Arkady mostly didn't have time to think about that, but the Prime Minister--Aral--forced him to take a shift or two off once a week. He had to pace himself, Aral said. It was a marathon, not a sprint. But when he was sent off to bed to sleep away his free hours, Arkady lay awake thinking of Kanzian, because that was easier than thinking what the rest of the course of the marathon might look like. Arkady was at the epicenter of a secret that could blow Barrayar apart if it came out, and he was standing, and occasionally lying down, beside the only man who could possibly bring the Imperium through it in one piece.

In the midst of all that, Arkady didn't even have to try to dodge his mother's calls. He recorded messages for her that he reviewed more carefully than he checked the Prime Minister's reports, anxiously editing and rerecording to be sure he was giving no hint of the strain he was under. He was even more determined to protect his mother than he was to protect the secret. He was the only one carrying out that duty; there was no backup.

He thought of that again as he walked up the sidewalk toward her apartment building, two nights before they were to depart on the state visit to Pol. He'd thought of using his couple of free hours while Aral was having a private strategic dinner with Captain Illyan and Commander Koudelka to call her, and then realized that he shouldn't go wasting this last free night in the same city with her. He knew she wasn't as alone as he imagined her, even though she had never remarried--she spoke of friends when he talked to her, of her sisters and brothers-in-law and Arkady's assorted cousins down in Vorbataille District, her coworkers at the municipal building. She wasn't alone.

And yet, as Arkady tapped in the access code and made for the lift tube, he couldn't help remembering the smaller, shabbier building where he and his mother and father had lived when he was small, before his father died. His mother had taken him to kindergarten every morning during the Pretendership, just like normal. There had been soldiers everywhere--they'd heard the fighting, sometimes--but his mother had told him again and again, _Just don't look. Just keep walking. No one cares about us, we're not important._

They hadn't been. They were just a noncom's wife and five-year-old son, just like any other prole woman and child in the city, drawing no attention. Not like Lady Alys Vorpatril, whom Arkady had seen a dozen times in Vorkosigan House in the last few weeks, who had been hunted through the streets, who had seen her husband killed in front of her and fled the city to save the life of her newborn son, Lord Ivan. Not like the Countess, who had personally ended the Pretendership. Not like Aral.

If anything like it happened again, Arkady would be in the middle of it--except that for the next several weeks he'd be off the planet, out of the Imperium entirely, and so would Aral. 

Arkady knocked at his mother's door, though he had a key; she had always insisted that her home was his, too. Still, she wasn't expecting him. Arkady hadn't even called ahead to be sure she was home. 

He heard her make a delighted noise from behind the door when she checked the security screen; by the time the door opened she was beaming and rushing through to hug him there on the threshold. He let himself smile back and hold her tight, a little surprised, as he always was, to be so much bigger and taller than she was. 

"Hello, Maman," he murmured. "I had a free hour, I thought you might be willing to feed me. I brought dessert." 

He raised the little box one of the cooks at Vorkosigan House had fixed for him, full of chocolate cake and those apricot jam cookies his mother loved but would never bother to make or buy just for herself.

"Kado, of course," she said, giving him a last squeeze and then turning toward the kitchen, so that he nearly didn't see her wiping her eyes with her hand. She lapsed into her native French as she went on. "But I'm afraid you came a long way for not much, sweetheart. I haven't been to market all week. I stopped for pelmeni on my way home, but I'm sure I can scrounge something up for you if you promise not to mind too much what it is."

"I don't mind," Arkady assured her, following her into the kitchen and sitting down in the chair by the window that had always been his, running his hand over the surface of the familiar old kitchen table. There was--as there had been for a couple of decades--a drop of pale pink nail polish dried to the surface, and Arkady scraped at it with his fingernail, thinking as he did every time he sat in his mother's kitchen that it would probably only take a minute to clean off with a bit of solvent. 

His mother's hand settled over his, and she hugged him again where he sat, letting him lean his head against her belly as she draped her other arm around his shoulders. After a while she leaned down and kissed the top of his head and said, "I'll make some oladyi for you, how about that? Breakfast for supper, just like we used to do."

Arkady nodded against her stomach, and his mother squeezed his hand and then stepped away. He watched her putting the griddle on to heat, setting out her mixing bowl and taking out ingredients.

"So," she said, after she'd poured out the yogurt and cracked an egg into the bowl. "Did you come to tell me you're going away to Pol with the Prime Minister on a state visit?"

"I know you read the newsfeeds, Ma," Arkady said, summoning up another smile. "And I'm sure Ma Jankowski would have told you by now even if you didn't."

His mother had been to Vorkosigan House a couple of months ago, for the post-Midsummer party the Count and Countess threw for their Armsmen and staff and all their families. She'd been accepted seamlessly into the ranks of the wives and mothers of Armsmen. He'd introduced her to Aral--to his--to the Prime Minister, and she'd cried then too, bursting with pride in him.

She added flour to the batter without bothering to measure--she'd been making one egg's worth of oladyi since Arkady was old enough to eat them--and said, "So?"

"So, I came to ask what sort of present I should bring you back from Pol," Arkady said. 

He would be trying to bring her back an Emperor, but if all went well she would never notice he'd done it. 

" _Quel genre de cadeau_?" she repeated back to him, stressing the words so that he would hear that he'd said it in French. "I want a safe and healthy Kado back from Pol when he's finished his duties there, of course."

" _Sans doute_ ," Arkady echoed back softly, his eyes falling again to the drop of his mother's nail polish on the old table. Of course. Because that was what he hadn't brought her--or not very promptly, at least--the last time he returned from offworld.

He'd been doing quite well at not thinking of that part of it. The Emperor was missing; the Prime Minister needed him. Aral needed him. Of course Arkady would go wherever his duties led him, would do whatever was required of him. Naturally the logical course was for the Prime Minister to take a warship by these neatly diplomatic means as close to the Emperor's location as possible, in order to do whatever proved necessary to retrieve him. If this also meant that Arkady had to break atmosphere and place himself on a warship again for the first time since he'd nearly died on one, well. That was not his to question.

He listened as his mother poured the batter, listened the sizzle as it cooked and breathed in the familiar smell of oladyi. She'd brought them to him in the hospital two or three times a week for the whole length of his recovery; they had made him feel a little as if he were back in this kitchen every time. Now that he was here the smell took him back to the hospital instead. His toes flexed compulsively in his boots. He stood up quickly enough that his mother half-turned to see what was wrong, and he covered it by going to the refrigerator to fetch out the sour cream and the brillberry jam, which his mother always kept on hand just for him.

He set them down on the table and sat again, and his mother turned back to the pan without remarking that she could have fetched those. She had learned when not to fuss over him too much.

His mother said instead, "I had a message from your Aunt Rose today--Charlotte is engaged."

Arkady swallowed and mustered up a bit of humor as he said, "Again?"

"Rose thinks she means it this time," his mother insisted. She went off into an analysis of the merits of Charlotte's latest fiance and her apparent feelings about him, which lasted through the rest of the time it took the oladyi to cook. She dished them onto a plate and set it before him with a fork and knife, fetched him a napkin and poured some tea--a concession to his adulthood, or it would have been milk or apple juice--all the while discussing various family members' opinions of the odds of Charlotte settling on this one long enough to get to the groat circle.

She sat down across from him, and waited until Arkady had his mouth full of tart-sweet oladyi before she said, "You'll be back by then, I should think."

The wedding was planned for spring; no state visit could possibly last so long. Even a war was likely to be over by then. Arkady nodded cautiously.

"You stay close to Count Vorkosigan," his mother said firmly. "That's where you belong. If anything happens, you stay right next to him, let all his other guards do their jobs. I know you're a soldier, but that doesn't mean only one thing."

It did though, in the end. Arkady shifted his leg restlessly--this time not so much to know he could as to feel the weight of the knife in his pocket, to say nothing of the disguised hyposprays. He would be the last man between Aral and anything that got that far, and depending on what happened next, there might be men determined enough to get that far coming at them. If there were, they would probably be wearing the same uniform Arkady was wearing. But perhaps they wouldn't have to come that close at all--sabotage a shuttle, vent atmosphere from a section, cause a seemingly-accidental hull breach....

"Kado," his mother said, and Arkady looked up at her and then down to realize he had turned his fork in his hand and was holding it like a knife he was about to wield in a fight. He stared down at his fingers for a moment before he made them relax enough that he couldn't see the creases of his knuckle standing out as stark pink lines. 

"I'll stay close to the Prime Minister, Maman," Arkady said quietly, setting his fork down beside his plate. "You're right, that's my duty. But if anything happens while I'm gone, if you need anyone--"

"Sweetheart, I'll be fine."

"If something happens," Arkady repeated, knowing she thought he was worried about dying, afraid of leaving her without a male relative's protection. "If you need to call on someone in the capitol."

Arkady steeled himself to say it. He'd made the strategic decision weeks ago, had cleared it days before. 

"Do you remember the officer who gave me my recommendation to the Academy?" Arkady said, raising his eyes to his mother's and keeping his face as neutral as he knew how. "Major Lord Hector Vorgorov."

His mother looked baffled now. She didn't understand why he wouldn't commend her to the Vorkosigans, who she had met, who would feel a responsibility for his dependents if he should come to harm in Count Vorkosigan's service. But if something happened in the sense Arkady was thinking of, being under the protection of the Vorkosigans would only make her a target. Tonton wasn't anyone, politically, and he knew how to organize things by back channels, how to stay under the radar. If it came to chaos in the capitol, no one would be better positioned to come through it safely than Tonton, and he had promised to look after Arkady's Maman. 

Arkady took a card from his pocket and slid it across the table to her. "We've stayed in touch," Arkady said. "He still feels responsible for me, almost my first commanding officer, you see. If something should happen while I was gone, you could go to him."

His mother touched the card carefully, and Arkady noticed that she wasn't wearing the familiar pale pink nail polish; her hands were unadorned today except for the thin gold ring she still wore for his father. When her fingertips traced Tonton's name Arkady half expected the letters to burst into flame, his secret to come boiling out on contact. Tonton wasn't anything to him, not like the Prime Minister was; Arkady had only the thinnest of excuses to cover this acquaintance, and it wouldn't hold against the weight he was proposing to place on it. But the name was only a name. His mother didn't, wouldn't, know what it meant.

"If you need anything while I'm gone," Arkady repeated softly. "Maman, please. Go to him."

His mother raised her gaze to his, and he felt for an instant as if she were looking right through, as if he had no secrets from her at all. But that couldn't be true, because she looked at him with the same loving fondness and pride as always, and she said, "All right, Kado. But I'll be fine, and you'll be back soon, so I don't know why you bother about it."

Arkady had to look away himself, then, and he reached for the box he'd brought and pushed it toward her. "Here, get started on dessert, you already had dinner."

* * *

All along the walk back to Vorkosigan House Arkady was conscious of his legs, the way he'd been when he first got out of ImpMil. He felt the way his weight shifted from one to the other, the ease of keeping his balance which had taken him so much physical therapy to regain. He felt every stride, the stretch and contraction of each muscle group.

He was going up again. He was going out there again. 

Most of the injuries he suffered could have happened to him anywhere--a lightflyer crash, a traffic accident, a bad fall, old-fashioned face-to-face combat. The spinal cord injury could be replicated with a knife, for the most part; an assassin's blade, a surgical mishap. There were a hundred ways he could be injured exactly as badly, or worse. There were plenty of worse things. But it had happened to him out there, the explosive decompression throwing him and a lot of debris right out through that hull breach, some of the debris penetrating his hastily-donned suit. 

He still saw the little spray of red escaping into vacuum, sometimes, in his dreams, but that was better than seeing it in splashes of water and spilled soup. 

He didn't scream. He had never screamed, even at the time, even watching his own blood blow out of his suit to freeze in vacuum--as most of the skin on his leg had done inside the breached suit. They'd had to graft on new, after.

He hadn't screamed, but he had felt the blooming panic, the certainty that he was watching his own death in that spreading red mist against the stars. A breached suit meant seconds to live, and he already couldn't feel his legs, had no way to know how badly he was bleeding, how much more blood might be pouring out inside the suit. Blacking out hadn't been a surprise at all; waking up afterward had been.

Arkady tried to stop thinking of it. He took deep breaths, he looked at his surroundings, he felt the brush of his trouser legs against his skin with every stride, felt the secure hold of his boots around his lower legs. But his mind couldn't help skipping past the moment he was in to the moment that was coming. 

He'd managed not to think of it, really, until now. The Prime Minister had to go to Pol, and that meant Arkady did, too. He could not refuse a lawful order, could not show fear or hesitation, no matter how gruesomely he could die out there. He could die down here, too, in an assassination or a civil war.

He saw the spray of blood again, a red mist against the wheeling stars and the blackness, and he made himself look up at the deepening blue of the sky overhead, standing still while his toes flexed in his boots.

 _It doesn't matter_ , he told himself. _You have your orders_.

Except, he realized, staring up into the sky as it went black, he didn't. A little crack opened in his certainty, the tiniest breach of that armored hull, and his certainty vented in a spray he could almost see.

* * *

Arkady knew to expect Aral in his bedroom at Vorkosigan House that night; it was the only way he managed to keep up his apparent calm all day. He would settle it that night.

He knew, logically, that Aral wouldn't simply relieve him of this duty because it terrified him. Aral was Prime Minister Admiral Count Vorkosigan, and his long political career had been built upon a scrupulous fairness to enemies and friends alike. Arkady had no reasonable grounds not to fulfill his duties even if they took him off-world. Aral wouldn't change that. 

Except that he could ask Aral, not the Prime Minister, and ask as Arkady, not Lieutenant Jole, and he couldn't know for sure that Aral would absolutely say no to him if he asked that way, if he made it personal. He was almost certain--he was more certain Aral would lose all respect for him if he asked--but the question still existed, niggling at his brain. The faint possibility of an escape made the fear grip him all the harder, knowing that there might be a way not to have to face vacuum again, not to have to look out at that black field of stars that had been the last thing he saw up there.

He stood at a window in the Blue Suite now, making himself look up at the sky as the stars came out. Most of them were washed out by the city glow, but a few bright ones showed through in the blackest part of the sky. Arkady made himself look, toes flexing in his boots, hands clenched at his sides, imagining those few multiplied to countless thousands.

He had to talk to Aral, to make himself know that he had no escape. Once it was inevitable he was sure he could face it. Logically he knew he would be safe; no one would be kept safer than the Prime Minister. His mother had been right. All Arkady had to do was stay next to Aral and he'd be the second-best defended man in the Imperium. Unless--unless--unless--

Aral knocked at the door, the familiar brisk double-rap, and then let himself in without waiting. Arkady squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his forehead against the glass, taking a few deep breaths. He heard Aral shut the door behind him and lock it, and only then did Aral say, cautiously, "Jole?"

Splitting the difference neatly between the _Arkan_ that was usual in this room and the _Lieutenant_ that the deliberately-retained uniform requested. Arkady exhaled, nodding against the glass, and then turned to face Aral--still in uniform, still the Admiral and Prime Minister. Suitable, for Arkady's next question.

"Sir," Arkady said. "Could you clarify my present orders for me?"

Aral's concerned face went blank and guarded, and Arkady realized how it must sound: a request for clarification was, among other things, the first step in determining that one had been issued a criminal order and deciding to resist it. Aral must be on edge in anticipation of exactly that sort of pushback, what with the Emperor's disappearance.

Arkady shook his head quickly, holding his hands out palms-first. "It's only--you never really tell me to do things, most of the time. I just do them because they need doing, and you haven't said, for this state visit. Please, sir, if you could just tell me. Order me."

Aral looked slightly reassured when Arkady started talking, increasingly enlightened as he went on, and then a bit intrigued, on the last two words. Arkady bit off further babbling and locked his knees against the impulse to fold. Aral didn't like that sort of thing, and especially wouldn't like it when they were both in uniform and discussing Arkady's duties.

When he spoke, Aral's voice was cool but absolutely commanding, brooking no argument. "In your present posting as my military secretary, you handle my scheduling and other administrative duties as assigned. This will require you to travel with me wherever I go, including off-world and potentially into some manner of combat if we are forced to rescue the Emperor in force. Rules regarding the heat of battle may go into effect at virtually any time. Is that understood, Lieutenant?"

Arkady had straightened to full attention halfway through, and it was genuine reflex to salute as he said, "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

"Excellent," Aral said, returning the salute. Arkady could see him push away his command position as he lowered his hand--it was the way his shoulders softened, and something in his face, too--even before he unfastened the collar of his tunic. "Would you like to tell me what that was about, then, Arkady?"

Arkady came over to Aral and reached out, sliding his hands under Aral's to continue unfastening his tunic. Aral allowed that for a moment, and then reached out in return, starting on Arkady's fastenings. They both worked in silence until they were down to their undershirts; Arkady laid their tunics over a chair together, and then Aral caught Arkady's shoulder in one hand and put two fingers of the other under his chin.

"Arkan," he said quietly, firmly.

Arkady stepped into Aral's space and reached behind himself to ruck up the back of his undershirt. He didn't have to draw Aral's hand down. Aral settled his hand over Arkady's and let his fingers be guided to the small scars around Arkady's spine at the small of his back.

"Ah," Aral said simply, and flattened his hand over Arkady's, pinning him in place for a brief kiss. "Boots off and into bed, then."

Arkady nodded, undressing himself quietly while Aral did the same beside him. Aral walked over to the room's comconsole to dim the lights and set the comms for the night, and Arkady got under the covers and lay down, trying to find the words to say it without saying it. When Aral came back he sat lightly on the edge of the bed, holding the covers in one hand, and said, "Will you let me see?"

Arkady nodded, rolling onto his stomach while Aral pushed the covers down. Aral rested one hand on the back of his shoulder while the other slid down his spine to the little nexus of scars.

"Your back was broken?" Aral asked, a question with a known answer.

"Flying debris," Arkady reported quietly. "The pressure suit wasn't breached there, but the impact smashed a few vertebrae."

"They were able to reattach your spinal cord fully?"

Arkady knew Aral was thinking of Commander Koudelka and nodded. "Nothing artificial in there at all, just eight weeks of physiotherapy to get everything working again."

Aral's thumb traced each of the scar-tracks, and then he pushed Arkady to roll over. Arkady went obediently, drawing his leg up to show the scars. Aral touched the obvious ones, just below his knee, and then more cautiously traced the subtle lines marking the outer edges of the skin grafts. He'd had frostbite from ankle to hip requiring varying levels of replacement. That had seemed ironic to Arkady, considering how much more thoroughly frozen he'd been right after. 

"Anywhere else?" Aral asked softly, and when Arkady opened his eyes he met Aral's steady gaze.

Arkady nodded a little and then jerked his chin up, stroking his index finger over a nearly invisible mark on his pulse point, then on the other side. They were such tiny wounds, only punctures. There hadn't been much blood left to drain from him, by then. Aral leaned forward, his finger following Arkady's.

"It was a triage decision," Arkady said, letting his eyes close again with Aral's hand on his throat. "They could have kept me alive, but it was four jumps back to any kind of medical facility rated to deal with my spinal injuries, and with something like that time is of the essence--the more scar tissue that forms, the worse it is. By icing me they stopped the clock."

"You were cryo-frozen," Aral said, and Arkady detected a hint of actual surprise under Aral's carefully steady tone.

Arkady nodded and still didn't open his eyes. "They told me after that I wasn't dead--I didn't die out there, it was only that the surgeon made a particular triage and treatment decision to maximize my likelihood of a full recovery. My oaths were not terminated, my mother received no survivor's benefits. I did not die."

"Didn't you," Aral said quietly, his hand sliding down from Arkady's throat to spread above his heart. "Did they tell you that meant you shouldn't be afraid to go back, too?"

Arkady squeezed his eyes more tightly shut and turned his face away. 

"Fear is not cowardice," Aral said softly. "I know you'll obey your orders."

"I just," Arkady said, making himself open his eyes, making himself look up into Aral's understanding gaze. "I needed the orders. To put my back against."

Aral nodded slowly. "I shall be as explicit as I can, going forward," Aral said. "But I shall be making unreasonable demands of you out there--I'm not sure just how unreasonable it's going to get, but I need to know that you'll be able to use your initiative when a situation arises that requires it."

"I won't fail you, sir," Arkady said firmly, and he knew that he would not. It was unthinkable. Aral needed him. "I'm not so bad in action. It was only the waiting and wondering."

"Mm," Aral said, and curled down over him for a kiss. "Well. Let's not give you too much more time to think, shall we?"


	2. Chapter 2

The stream of Aral's frustrated thoughts had a distinctly Betan accent as he readied himself for bed while mentally counting off the time it would take Arkady to get to his own cabin and get bedded down. It wasn't merely that it was frustrating to keep the secret of their relationship on shipboard; it was _bloody inefficient_ , as he had no doubt Cordelia would say. Aral had enough other secrets to keep, locked down in the burning ache of his stomach. Keeping this one along with the rest took up time, attention, and energy he could hardly spare.

And, he thought wryly, getting into bed, he'd really rather not be going to bed alone tonight. Even more, he'd rather not be sending Arkady to bed alone; there had been some minor malfunction with the ship's systems this morning, a few hiccups in the artificial gravity. Arkady had handled the brief inconvenience smoothly, but Aral had seen the signs of strain on him ever since. This was not going to be a restful night. 

Aral had been briefly tempted to find some pretext for keeping Arkady at work all night, or at least into the small hours, but he was exhausted himself, and he knew he had to get enough sleep to be properly functional tomorrow. They were going planetside again halfway through the day for the next round of diplomatic meetings, to be capped by an even more crucial dinner and reception. Aral would have to be in full politicking spate, making nice with the Polians no matter what security reports came through in the morning, no matter what his personal terror for the fates of his son and foster son and what their deaths could mean for him and three worlds with him. No matter how much work he had to put into ignoring the spectacle of yet another wave of flirtatious assaults on his secretary--his bloody damned _boyfriend_ , yes, thank you, Cordelia.

And no matter how much his stomach hurt. He reached over to the little cabinet by his bed, picking up the container of antacids. A single tablet dropped out into his hand; he knew that wouldn't help much, but it was better than nothing. He crunched it down and turned over, looking for a more comfortable position, and picked up his secure comm link. 

For strictly official and logical reasons, he and Arkady had a dedicated secure channel. Even ImpSec ought not to be listening to that particular link, unless they had some especially compelling reason. And ImpSec, as an organization, already knew the gist of anything Aral might choose to say to Arkady in the dark over a secure link. Simon would certainly have briefed the officers accompanying him on this trip to avoid any awkward, and more importantly security-compromising, misunderstandings.

Of course there was always the possibility that Arkady had already taken his own steps to wear himself out enough to sleep. He had spent several evenings already in the ship's training facilities, exercising rather more strenuously than mere fitness required. Well, so, Aral might get him on a secure channel just to listen to him breathing heavily for a minute or two before he said good night. He could think of worse ways to spend his time.

Aral set the channel on the comm link, checked it twice, and then keyed it on. "Lieutenant?"

Arkady's reply came almost at once. "Yes."

Not, crucially, _yes, sir_ , which would be the correct reply to _Lieutenant_ if anyone else could hear, or if Arkady thought that this was anything other than a personal call. That was the affirmative _yes_ of an invitation. 

Aral sighed. "Have I mentioned how badly I wish we were home, Arkan?"

"Oh," Arkady said, his voice coming out with a shakiness that might have been the ghost of a laugh. "I think however badly you want it, I want it more."

Aral made a wordless noise of agreement. "Where would you go, if you could be home right now? Instantly?"

Arkady let out a long breath, and he hesitated enough in his answer that Aral thought he was really considering his options. That was all to the good; just so he was thinking of anything but hull breaches and vacuum. 

"Down by the lake, I think. Making those arrangements for the party at Vorkosigan Surleau, I kept remembering it."

"It's winter now," Aral pointed out. Arkady wouldn't want to think of being cold tonight, but he'd need details to focus on, and Aral could paint the picture for him. "Not like when we visited at midsummer. The lake will be frozen nearly all the way across--maybe all the way, by now. The snow will be drifted all around the boathouse and covering the dock."

"Maybe I'd stay inside, then," Arkady said. Aral could hear him falling into the idea, the fantasy spinning out between them over the comm. "I could find myself a fireplace to sit by."

Aral mentally shuffled through the options; there were at least a dozen fireplaces in the house at Vorkosigan Surleau. There was one that would be particularly good for this, though.

"The smaller morning room, beyond the library," Aral suggested. "The windows face east--the view is mostly of the pastures, but it gets good light in the morning. It's dim in the evening, though. No one would be there this time of day. We never put overhead lights in, just a lamp or two. If there's a fire lit we might not even bother with that. It's a small room, down at the far end of the corridor away from everything. It has a couple of old sofas, and the rug is very soft."

"I've heard enough complaints about how drafty the old pile is in the winter." There was a hint of teasing in Arkady's voice, and it warmed Aral more than the thought of the fire. Teasing was a good sign. "I'd probably lie down on the rug by the fire."

"You'd be nice and warm, then, and the room would be very dim," Aral said, letting his voice drop gently. "I might come in and find you there, dozing by the fire."

"I'd like that," Arkady agreed. "I probably told you where to find me. I might have gotten sleepy, though, waiting for you. And then I open my eyes and there you are."

"I'm there," Aral assured him. "I'll come in and sit down next to you, but I won't touch you before you wake up. I don't want to startle you."

"You just don't want to wake me," Arkady countered. "I know you like watching me sleep. I know you're there, but I'll pretend for a little while and let you look."

Aral pictured it: all of this mess behind them, successfully and safely resolved, and Arkady dozing on the floor of the morning room, firelight playing over his skin while Aral watched him sleep. He could almost see it, and he'd watched Arkady wake up--or give up the pretense of sleeping--enough times to know what would happen next. 

"You can't keep pretending for long," Aral said. "You open your eyes and smile up at me, and then you stretch."

"Mm," Arkady said, drawing it out into a languorous noise that resonated right down Aral's spine; he thought he could hear a soft shushing friction noise, as if Arkady really were stretching in his bunk two levels away. Aral could picture it, his arms and legs making long pale lines against the even paler sheets, his chest rising as his back bowed, his head tilting back. His eyes stayed fixed on Aral.

"Just begging to be touched," Aral said softly.

"Yes," Arkady said, and it didn't sound like any kind of fantasy. "Aral, please."

Aral ached to grant that request, but dwelling on impossibilities wouldn't get them anywhere except the same lonely frustration they'd been enduring for weeks now. 

"You know I want to," Aral said firmly. "But I won't this time. I'm sitting beside you, so close I can feel the heat of the fire, but I'm not going to touch you. You're going to do it for me, Arkan."

"Is that," Arkady said, and faltered.

Aral knew what he'd wanted to ask, and why he hadn't wanted to risk wrecking the fantasy with it. But, hell, it was a fantasy, and Aral didn't want to break the illusion they had going now. He could give Arkady what he wanted in this.

"Yes, Arkan," Aral said, putting a little steel behind the warmth of his voice. "That is an order."

"Oh," Arkady said, startled and, if Aral did not very much miss his guess, intensely aroused. He felt an answering stir of heat at the recognition of how much Arkady liked it.

"I do like my subordinates to show initiative," Aral went on, and Arkady's breath hitched. "But you've only just woken up, so I expect you'll need a few specific instructions to get you started."

"Please, sir," Arkady returned, and the tone of his voice was enough to make Aral squirm to a different position on the bed, sliding one hand under the covers. He'd worry about how easily Arkady said _sir_ that way, and how much he liked it, when they were somewhere they could actually touch each other again.

"Take your shirt off," Aral said. "Tell me how that feels."

There was a flurry of noise that sounded like Arkady actually taking his undershirt off, and then he said, "I can feel the fire now, hot on my skin. And the rug is so soft on my back, I just want to roll around on it. But there's a little draft I didn't notice before. It's giving me goosebumps."

"Say what you mean, Arkan," Aral corrected, swallowing his amusement and keeping his voice stern. God knew he'd had enough practice at that trick, in drastically different circumstances. "It's making your nipples hard."

Arkady let out a breath that was almost a laugh, and Aral counted a victory for himself. For both of them. "Yes, sir. Should I touch myself there, or do you want to look?"

"I always want to look," Aral said, which didn't require any imagination at all. He closed his eyes and pictured the scene, the brown points of Arkady's nipples punctuating all that fair firelit skin--he'd gone winter pale before they broke orbit, but next summer they'd go out to the long lake again, and Arkady's skin would take on a golden summer glow. Aral ached to touch him, now and then and always. "Touch yourself for me, the way I would."

"Lightly, then," Arkady said, and Aral imagined Arkady's clever fingers playing over his chest, fingertips brushing against sensitive skin, thumb circling the pebbled point. "Are you--are you watching, sir? Am I doing it right?"

"I can't take my eyes off you, Arkan," Aral assured him. "You're perfect. I want you so badly, love."

Arkady made another little sound, and Aral pressed his palm to his cock, rocking into it as he stiffened. 

"Harder now," Aral said. "Show me how you want it."

"I want," Arkady said, and then broke off. "Aral, please--"

"Hush, Arkan," Aral said, pressing his forehead against the mattress. He knew exactly what Arkady wasn't asking for--the one thing Aral couldn't give him right now, or anytime in the foreseeable future. "I know what you want. But you're going to do this for me. I know you can. Will you show me more, now?"

"Yes," Arkady said, to all of it. "Aral...."

"Are you still on the rug? Can you feel the fire?"

"Yes," Arkady said. "All over, now. I'm all spread out for you to see."

Aral could picture that startlingly clearly, and slid his hand inside his underwear to cradle his growing erection. "Are you just lying there letting me look?"

"I'm hard already," Arkady said. "Just knowing you're looking, just being naked here for you."

"Don't stop there, Arkan. You know I want you to feel good. Touch yourself for me."

"Yes sir," Arkady said softly, with a little hitch in his breath that let Aral know exactly when those lovely fingers curled around his beautiful cock. Aral tightened his own hand on himself. "I--I can hardly keep my eyes open, and the way you're looking at me, it's like you're touching me already."

"I'm sitting very close," Aral promised. "I'm leaning over you, looking down at you. I hardly know whether to watch your hands or your eyes, Arkan."

"Please," Arkady said, getting breathless now. Aral could hear little sounds of movement carrying through the comm, a soft rhythmic friction sound that had to be Arkady's hand working on his cock. Aral stroked himself in the same cadence. 

"Please, Aral, won't you...." Arkady still didn't ask, but Aral couldn't bear not to at least imagine it, now.

"What will I do first?" Aral asked him softly. "Will I touch you or kiss you?"

Arkady made a little broken pleading sound, and the pace of his movement picked up. "Kiss, Aral, please, please, I miss you so much--"

"Shh, I'm kissing you now," Aral said, licking his lips and letting himself want that kiss with all the passionate intensity he'd been spending on so many other things for so long now. "Your mouth is so sweet, I could kiss you all night, just keep you right here for hours and kiss you until you can't breathe and you're dizzy even lying down--"

"Aral," Arkady said, sounding like he was thoroughly off-balance already. Aral closed his eyes and listened to Arkady's frantic breathing, the hint of a moan creeping into his exhalations, until it was punctuated by a familiar breath-held silence and then Arkady saying, almost laughing, "Fuck, Aral, _fuck_."

Aral groaned, his hand speeding up without his volition; the sound of Arkady coming was more erotic than anything else, knowing he'd done that from here, coaxed that out of him with words, with a fantasy.

"And now it's my turn," Arkady said, his voice gone deliciously lazy. Aral knew the way he would be sprawling now, melting contentedly into his mattress, giving himself up. He was so unguarded at moments like this, so open. "What shall I do for you, Aral? Keep you here all night, kissing in front of the fire?"

"Please," Aral said, because he could almost see it, taste it, the vision of Arkady there, happy and safe and his, in that golden-bright future. 

"I will," Arkady said softly, "Yes. Aral, yes, all night, I'm here."

Aral sighed as his orgasm washed over him, relieving him of pain and thought and everything outside that moment and Arkady's voice.

"Oh," Aral said softly. "Thank you, Arkan."

"My pleasure," Arkady replied, sleepily smug. "I love you. I miss you."

"I'm here," Aral said softly. "Sleep well. I'm here. I love you."

"Sleep well," Arkady replied, and Aral endeavored to obey before he could remember how badly his stomach hurt, and why.

* * *

Aral was quite good at not looking across the room in Arkady's direction too often. As a very minor member of Aral's diplomatic party, Arkady was seated among other young, beautiful aides at a table that seemed to be having a great deal more fun than the high table where Aral did his obligatory political jockeying over the artistically presented over-spiced foreign food. He allowed himself to look toward Arkady once at each remove and once during each course; Arkady always looked back, checking in with a glance. Aral didn't allow himself to dwell beyond that. 

The morning's intelligence report had indicated that, after briefly surfacing three days before, Miles and Gregor were still missing somewhere in the Hub. The _Prince Serg_ was on one-hour alert status to break into the Hub with guns blazing at a word from ImpSec. But until the word came he had to stay here, going through this dance and aiming for a diplomatic solution, hoping that the boys would simply turn up safe again and save them being dragged into a barely-strategized three-front interstellar war.

Aral took another mechanical bite of his food, forced his mind away from tactical possibilities to go over with the admiral commanding the _Prince Serg_ , and allowed himself his glance for this course. Arkady was watching him with an expression of such absolute neutrality that Aral knew that he was being allowed to see it for a mask. 

Arkady tilted his head toward the door and then looked away, smiling brilliantly as he excused himself from his table and stood. Aral returned his attention to his own dinner companions, but the talk had turned pointedly casual at this stage, and he was able to excuse himself just as smoothly as Arkady had.

A member of his security staff, ImpSec Sergeant Schwartz, collected Aral at the door and said, "This way, sir."

Aral's stomach clenched tight around the certainty that he was about to be whisked to a shuttle and up to the _Prince Serg_ , but they went only a few meters down the hallway before Schwartz gestured him toward the door of a side room. Aral opened it, revealing a bland little office space, obviously supplied for the use of visiting dignitaries. 

Arkady stood inside, speaking into his secure comm link. As Aral entered he glanced up and said, "Yes, that will do. Thank you."

Aral raised his eyebrows, and Arkady glanced past Aral, toward the door. Aral looked back to see Schwartz taking up a guard stance outside as the door sealed again.

"Sir," Arkady said, drawing a tube from his pocket that clearly wasn't a light pen. "Could you tell me, on a scale of one to ten, how much pain you're in right now?"

Aral stared, entirely baffled by the question.

"If I think you're padding your answer I'll be forced to call a doctor to be certain," Arkady went on. "Sir, I know what you look like when you're hiding something, and I know how fast you've been going through antacids. How bad is it right now?"

Aral blew out a breath and forced himself to be patient. "Six, probably. It hurts, but it's nothing I can't manage."

"Except that you're not actually managing it," Arkady said, opening a cupboard and withdrawing a sealed bottle of water, which he opened and drank from before pouring the contents of the tube in. He capped it again and shook up the contents as he said, "I realize you don't want to show weakness out there and you don't want to spare a minute from doing what we're here for, but it's going to be worse if you wait until this turns into something you can't ignore and you're laid up for a day or two with emergency surgery."

Arkady glanced at the bottle, the contents of which had gone milk-white. He uncapped it, took a smaller sip, and offered it to Aral.

Aral took a cautious sip, but the stuff wasn't unpleasant; the taste was faintly minty, and it felt instantly soothing as it went down. 

"Any particular reason you had to do this right now?" Aral asked, though he couldn't find it in himself to be particularly upset over missing the rest of whatever he was supposed to be eating out there, nor this round of conversation. Not when the alternative was the sudden quenching of the fire in his stomach and Arkady.

"You'd started checking out of the conversation, which meant it wasn't vital," Arkady said. "You were in the middle of a meal, which is when you're in the most pain, and therefore most receptive to being told you have to do something about it. And eating is bothering you markedly more today than it was yesterday, which meant I couldn't let you slide any further."

Aral was fascinated, if also slightly unnerved, to have Arkady's excellent grasp of tactics so overtly applied to managing him. "How do you know how much it's bothering me to eat?"

"I pay attention," Arkady said simply. "How long you pause between bites, how blank your face gets, that kind of thing. You didn't think I was down there flirting and having fun, did you?"

"Well," Aral said, taking a longer pull from the bottle. "I thought someone ought to be."

Arkady smiled slightly. "All of us down there are just trying to look ornamental while waiting for a sign from one of the high tables."

"Or to send one of your own," Aral observed. There was actually no question of who was commanding who in this room just now. He didn't mind; he had a taste for handing himself over to someone else's ruthless logic, and he was much too old to train himself out of that tendency now.

Arkady tilted his head in acknowledgment. "As necessary. I spoke to the ship's surgeon before you came in. He prescribed that," Arkady nodded toward the bottle in Aral's hand, and Aral obediently drank off the rest. "And he said that ought to hold you until morning. If the pain is too much to let you sleep he'll examine you when we get back to the ship, otherwise first thing in the morning."

Aral nodded. "I take it I'm not to eat anything else tonight?"

"I'll explain to the servers before I go back in," Arkady assured him. "They'll keep you supplied with water."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Aral said, realizing as he said it--as Arkady responded with a brisk, professional nod--that it was the correct thing to say. Arkady was doing his job just now, and doing it very well. Despite the momentary privacy, it wouldn't be right to make this anything else. 

Aral handed back the bottle, gave Arkady's shoulder a perfectly unobjectionable squeeze, and braced himself to go back out to finish the damned dinner party.

* * *

The diagnostic tests were familiar--not from the time his ulcers had gone critical, but from all the follow up tests afterward. Perhaps the oddest point of familiarity was that Arkady stood attentively beside him throughout the process, taking notes and asking questions, in precisely the same manner Cordelia had done back in Vorbarr Sultana.

Safeguarding Aral's health, and keeping track of details Aral couldn't be troubled to note for himself, was Arkady's job. Still, it seemed such a blatant substitution that it was strange to find no one else noticed it. 

"No point advising you to reduce stress," the surgeon summed up when the tests were done. "We'll go straight to upping your meds and putting you on food replacement until your stomach heals. Nothing's perforated, as I'm sure you can tell, so we may yet get out of this without bloodshed."

Aral's stomach gave a stab of pain that ought to have been medically impossible, given the buffering liquid filling it. Aral said solemnly, "Amen."

The surgeon smiled wryly, taking it for a joke, and Aral didn't contradict him.

* * *

At 1400 ship time, Arkady walked into Aral's office with a covered tray and sealed the door behind him. Aral raised his eyebrows. No new data disks appeared from Arkady's pockets; instead he gestured the holo screens at Aral's desk to blankness. Aral pushed his chair back a few inches and did not override him.

"Doctor's orders," Arkady announced with a certain self-satisfied virtuousness. "I told him how badly your normal meal routine had been disrupted, and he was very insistent that until and unless an actual emergent situation arises, you should have your normal hour of uninterrupted time for lunch. Naturally I will understand if you want to spend your lunch hour in light reading or personal correspondence, but I thought you might like company."

Arkady set the tray down on Aral's desk and uncovered it to reveal two identically unappetizing bowls of pale mush.

"In my misery?" Aral asked, picking up a spoon and prodding the contents of the nearer bowl. He remembered this stuff, entirely without fondness.

"I'm told it's extremely well balanced, nutritionally speaking," Arkady said, perching on the edge of the desk and picking up the other bowl. "Incidentally your surgeon thinks I have a slightly worrying case of hero worship for you."

Aral snorted but followed Arkady's good example and picked up his own bowl of mush, gamely dipping his spoon into it. "Has he prescribed anything for your condition?"

"Mm, I think he means to observe the case," Arkady said, shoveling a heaping spoonful of the stuff into his mouth with the natural enthusiasm for food of a healthy twenty-something. The betrayed expression on his face made Aral bark a laugh, and he took his own first spoonful as much to refresh his memory of what Arkady had just experienced as to get it over with. 

It really was amazing how something that logically _had_ to be made of some kind of actual food could taste so much like nothing. It had a silky-plastic foamy feel in the mouth and a faint medicinal tang after swallowing.

"What _is_ this?" Arkady demanded, looking down at the bowl like he was calculating exactly how many more times he was going to have to choke down a spoonful. Aral had known the exact number by the end of his last ulcer recovery, but that had been based on the everyday china and silver at Vorkosigan House. He'd have to learn this set all over again. He picked up another spoonful and thought, _two_.

"I'd just like to point out that you're eating it voluntarily," Aral said, popping another spoonful into his mouth. 

"Yes, well," Arkady muttered, and stopped there, bereft of any actual argument. He popped another heaping spoonful into his mouth and made a baffled face, like he'd managed to forget exactly how much it didn't taste like food between one bite and the next. "Couldn't they make it taste like _something_?"

"Artificial flavors are a possible irritant in some cases," Aral recited, from bitter memory. "You could salt yours." 

There was a distinct lack of ready condiments in his office, but Arkady could undoubtedly magic some up from somewhere if he put his mind to it. They had fifty-six minutes of his lunch hour left, and neutral-temperature medical mush did not get any more or less appetizing if left to sit a while. 

"I could also mix some kind of _actual food_ into it," Arkady muttered darkly. "I suppose with jam or honey you could pretend it was oatmeal."

Aral laughed suddenly, startling Arkady into looking over at him with another spoonful of mush raised halfway to his mouth.

"Or blue cheese dressing," Aral offered, which did not lessen the bafflement in Arkady's expression. "Have I ever told you about the conditions under which I met Cordelia?"

"She was your prisoner, and called you a hired killer," Arkady recited thoughtfully. "And you said the conditions were..." his gaze dropped to his spoon. "Inhumane."

"Oatmeal," Aral said. "And blue cheese dressing. Every meal, for four days. That was all we had."

"Oatmeal," Arkady repeated, a little longingly, though that didn't cover the pleased look that flashed across his face any time Aral drew some oblique parallel to his relationship with Cordelia. "I've seen you eat oatmeal, though of course you prefer groats."

"It took a few years," Aral said. "But I did make my peace with oatmeal eventually."

Arkady picked up a spoonful of the mush and inverted it, staring for a moment at the resolute way it stuck to the spoon before licking it off in a quite unnecessarily obscene fashion. Aral nonetheless followed his lead, turning his spoon before licking off its contents. It didn't improve the taste, but he rather enjoyed the light in Arkady's eyes, watching him. 

"Not blue cheese dressing, though," Arkady mused, looking back down at the mush as he stirred it. 

"Ruined for me permanently," Aral agreed, wincing at just the memory of the taste. His stomach, mostly pacified by medication and mush, rolled a little, and the next bite of mush was almost reassuring in its absence of flavor. 

"Well, best not risk ruining jam, then," Arkady said before another resigned spoonful. He did, however, push the empty tray out of the way, scooting closer along the edge of the desk until he could prop one foot on the edge of Aral's chair. "We'll just have to think of some other way to make lunch palatable."

"Hmm," Aral said around another bite of mush, going down almost unnoticed as he looked up at Arkady. "We have a whole hour for that project, do we?"

"Fifty-three minutes now," Arkady said. "But I'm sure that's plenty of time to think of something."

"Oh, yes," Aral said, reaching down to shift the position of Arkady's foot from the edge of the chair to the middle. "I have a few thoughts already."


	3. Chapter 3

Arkady had never seen anything more beautiful than Aral's face at the moment he realized he was not going to have to declare himself emperor and launch a tri-planetary civil war while fending off a Cetagandan expansion, to say nothing of grieving his foster son. 

"Sire," Aral exhaled, his grey eyes shining with joy, his whole expression lifted from the grimness which had been steadily overtaking him ever since the first report of the Emperor's disappearance.

"My lord Count," the Emperor replied over the comconsole, the warmth in his voice equal to what Arkady could see in Aral's expression, and then he added, "Aral."

Aral shook his head a little, still smiling, and said to the expression Arkady couldn't see, as he was standing carefully out of vid pickup range, "Later, Gregor. For now--I've got Pol in hand, where are we with Vervain?"

"Anywhere we want to be," the Emperor said promptly. "And I have some thoughts about Aslund. I can be softening them up over comms while I'm en route to you--"

Arkady lowered his gaze to his comm panel and quietly took notes. The grin on his face, unseen, troubled no one.

* * *

Aral met privately with the Emperor after he reached the _Prince Serg_ \--Arkady had a glimpse of the firm hug the Emperor was yanked into as the door was closing, but all else was silence for nearly an hour. Aral returned to his flag office--where Arkady had been tracking tactical updates and making soothing noises at an assortment of highly ranked officers who realized they couldn't interrupt the Emperor and Prime Minister but desperately wanted to--looking slightly dazed. Arkady sealed the office with a tap of codes at his comconsole. The officers would just have to find someone else to bother for the next little while.

Aral leaned over Arkady's shoulder, silently reviewing the tactical view Arkady had on his screen.

"He's coming with us," Aral said after a moment's silence, moving to lean hip-slung against the edge of Arkady's desk. 

"He's--" Aral ran a hand over his hair, then scrubbed it over his face, shaking his head a little. "I just got him _back_ , and now he's running straight into combat."

"Well," Arkady said. "You wanted him back for a reason."

Aral looked down at him, and Arkady tilted his head, trusting Aral to take his meaning. _You didn't want to be emperor. Now you have to obey your emperor._

Aral let out a rough little laugh. "Well said, Arkan. And I suppose this way if he dies I will die right next to him and be absolved of dealing with the consequences."

And Arkady would be right next to them both, so that went just as well for him. He patted Aral's knee. "That's the spirit, sir."

* * *

Aral relieved had been beautiful, but Aral in battle was _incandescent_. Arkady was desperately glad that he was posted at Aral's elbow and rarely had to even pretend to do anything but hang on his every word. He radiated such power, such total control over this vast enterprise, that Arkady couldn't tear his eyes away.

In deference to the Emperor as his co-commander, Aral kept up a constant flow of explanation and instruction, prompting the Emperor to issue almost precisely half of the few direct orders required as they pursued the Cetagandans across Vervani local space. It quickly became apparent to Arkady that this spate of instruction was being delivered almost exactly at his own level of need for explanation; the Emperor had only been a year ahead of him at the Academy, after all, and Arkady had actually seen more active military service than he had. 

There was a moment once when the Emperor, looking toward a viewscreen Aral was gesturing to, crossed gazes with Arkady. Their eyes met in a shared comprehension of their near-equality as Aral's apprentices. Arkady offered a tentative smile, hoping his expression didn't betray too much of his worship, and the Emperor returned a slight, wry twist of his lips before he transferred his attention to the viewscreen. The moment sank without a ripple into the flow of the battle.

Arkady was dimly aware of having fetched food and drinks twice for Aral and the Emperor--Aral's physician-approved compact meal-replacement bar was hardly distinct from the ration bar Arkady offered the Emperor--but it seemed hardly any time had passed in that exalted flow of action before it was over, the enemy vanquished, the post-battle mop-up well underway. Aral prompted Gregor to hand over operational command to the Admiral commanding the ship, and they retreated from the tactical room back to quarters. The Emperor was more talkative away from the crowd of officers in the tactics room, hashing over details with Aral as they walked until they reached the Emperor's quarters.

Aral smiled and cut off the Emperor's enthusiasm with, "We'll have more after-action next shift, I'm sure. But I advise letting yourself come down from the adrenaline rush in private."

The Emperor looked faintly chagrined, but said with a fairly smooth resumption of formality, "We will take that advice, sir. Thank you. Well done."

"Well done, Sire," Aral echoed, and turned away toward his own quarters, only a dozen meters down the corridor. 

As the door slid open, Arkady inquired in the most neutral tone he could manage while still flying on his own adrenaline rush, "Would you also like some privacy, sir?"

"Ha," Aral said, and did not spare a glance back toward the inevitable ImpSec guards outside the Emperor's door before he closed a hand on Arkady's arm and hauled him bodily inside. If Aral didn't care, Arkady didn't; ImpSec already knew everything worth knowing about him. Arkady smacked the control to seal the door after them, and then Aral was shoving him up against the wall beside it. The whole length of his body ground hard against Arkady's as he tugged Arkady down into a fierce, filthy kiss.

Aral was already hard, his cock an insistent pressure against Arkady's hip, and Arkady groaned and thrust right back against him, just as ready. It had been _weeks_ since they could touch each other beyond a few teasing kisses over lunch in Aral's office, and between that and the rush of battle Arkady was on the verge of coming just from the press of Aral's body against his.

"Please tell me," Aral said, sliding one hand down to Arkady's hip, "that you've got slick in one of those pockets."

Arkady grinned fiercely and reached into his left pocket, fishing out a little tube that he'd been trying not to think too much about the last few weeks. It just went in his pocket like all the other necessities, that was all. "Please tell me you're going to bend me over something and fuck me."

"Your grasp of the tactical situation is, as ever, impressive, Lieutenant," Aral said, so low it was nearly a growl, and Arkady shuddered at the power still radiating off him. It wasn't just his commanding officer who was about to fuck him; Aral was a conquering hero. Arkady felt almost dizzy with desire. 

Aral got a grip on his arm again and towed him across the room to a table, bolted in place as was always sensible on shipboard, intended for private meals. Arkady was already unfastening his belt and trousers as Aral pushed him toward it. He folded himself down onto the unyielding surface with a thump, shoving his pants down as Aral kicked Arkady's feet out to the angle he wanted. With his legs spread his pants couldn't fall further than mid-thigh, which was just as well, given the contents of his pockets. 

Aral pressed close behind him, close enough for the rough wool of his trousers to scratch against Arkady's thighs as Aral got his pants open. He felt the brush of Aral's hands as he got his cock out, and then the hard heat of it pressed against him, slotting into the cleft of his ass. 

Aral groaned at the touch and Arkady pushed back into it eagerly. Aral's hips jerked in, rutting against him instinctively and chasing that contact. Aral spread a hand on the small of his back, holding him down and rocking against him just like that. Arkady moaned every time the head of Aral's cock brushed over his hole, teasing him with what they both really wanted. 

He could just do it like that, Arkady thought. Dry, unprepped--it would hurt but he wouldn't care right now. He was already flying, desperate for it. If it hurt now he would be feeling it for days, carrying this moment with him all through whatever came next. "Please, sir."

"Yes," Aral said, his hips jerking again and his fingers digging in through the layers of Arkady's tunic and shirt, but he seemed to think the question had been something other than what Arkady was thinking. Aral took his hands away in the next second, and Arkady heard the pop of the little container of lube being opened and bit back the protest he wanted to make. Arguing would only slow things down.

When Aral pulled away from his ass, the weight of his cock against Arkady was replaced with the blunt pressure of two thick fingertips, slick and wet but still forceful as they pushed into him without hesitation. Arkady moaned and pushed eagerly into the penetration, feeling the little burn of being opened and making himself relax into it. "Yes, yes, please--"

"All right, Arkan, I've got you," Aral's voice was still nearly a growl despite the gentleness of the words. He pushed his fingers in, twisting them expertly as he did. Arkady rocked back into it, wanting more, and Aral's other hand came down on his back again, leaning into it and holding him in place. 

Arkady moaned but lay still under Aral's weight, hands wrapped around the far edge of the table. Aral's fingers worked in and out of him, slicking him and opening him up, making him shudder with a brush against his prostate. "Please, sir, I'm ready, I--please."

Aral made a little breathlessly amused noise and kept at it, leaning more weight against Arkady's back. "Don't try to dictate timing to me, boy."

Arkady shuddered and tried to make himself limp, melting into the table under Aral's hands, shaking his head a little to deny that he was anything other than Aral's to command. He bit his lip on further words, reduced to silent hopefulness, and let out broken moans when Aral teased him, pressing against his sweet spots again and again. Arkady's cock hung untouched below the edge of the table, already achingly hard, and it jerked when Aral's fingers moved just right inside him. Arkady pressed his forehead to the cool surface of the table and was dimly, hungrily aware that he might come just like this, before Aral was even inside him, just from being made ready. 

"Please," he panted, mostly to himself, and didn't know if he was telling himself to hold on or let go. "Please, please."

The noise he made when Aral's fingers pulled free of him was easy to identify, and his head came up and whipped around before the wordless protest was off his lips. But he took in the sight of Aral's slicking himself and Aral's gleaming, wicked grin. Arkady grinned back and tried to spread his legs wider, coming up against the unforgiving constriction of his uniform trousers. 

Aral closed one hand on his hip and Arkady had to put his head down again, not watching Aral push in. Just feeling it was as much as he could bear, his heart pounding and cock throbbing as the thickness of Aral's cock pushed against him and then inside. There was a moment when Arkady could feel him being careful, restrained, letting Arkady adjust--it was intense, even with some prep and proper lube, after weeks without and as keyed up as he was. As they both were. But he wanted more, wanted to be overwhelmed in every sense of the word. 

He snapped back, taking the rest of Aral's cock in one fast glide, and Aral growled and got both hands on his hips, pushing him down hard enough to bruise against the edge of the table, and that was the end of restraint. Arkady held on for dear life to the far edge of the table, trying to keep the noises bursting from his throat down to groans instead of full-throated cries as Aral fucked him right out of his mind. 

He was aware of the trickle of sweat down his back and under his arms, the rub of his uniform shirt and tunic against his skin everywhere he wasn't bared for this, the wool of Aral's trousers muffling the slap of their bodies on each thrust. They hadn't even made it to the bedroom, and if anyone walked into the Prime Minister's quarters now they would see him bent over for this, both of them still in uniform--and right now, today, at this hour, there wasn't a man on Barrayar who wouldn't be just as willing to give himself up to Aral Vorkosigan. But there was only one Aral wanted, and it was _him_ Aral was fucking now, his name Aral was panting in time to the ruthless thrusts of his cock, his hips that would bear bruises from Aral's hands tomorrow.

Arkady turned his face against his arm, trying to muffle the low wail against his tunic sleeve as he came, clenching tight around Aral's cock as he did. 

"Perfect, Arkan, yes," Aral moaned above him, but he wasn't finished yet. Arkady lay pliant under him after his own orgasm ended, as Aral fucked him relentlessly past the edge, setting off shivery overwhelmed aftershocks again and again until Arkady lost track of everything but this. He was Aral's, and Aral was fucking him, and he didn't need anything more. 

After a while he felt Aral curl down over him, resting his forehead against the back of Arkady's uniform tunic as Arkady rested his on the table. Arkady lifted one hand, which had long since lost its grip on the edge of the table, and tried awkwardly to touch. His fingers brushed Aral's hair, maybe his cheek, and then Aral's hand let go of his hip to close around his hand, lacing their fingers together against the table as Aral's thrusts went ragged, hard enough to press the breath out of him. Aral came like that, pressing Arkady's palm to the table, buried deep inside him, and Arkady echoed his sated sigh in perfect agreement.

They were both still for a moment, coming down, and Arkady had a little time to revel in the sensation of Aral's body resting on his, Aral still inside him. Then Arkady's brain began to kick up action items like _Need to clean the come off the friction matting_ and _I'm about to fall asleep and I can't stay here_. He stirred, and Aral sighed and nodded against his back. Aral squeezed his hand and hip and then moved, pulling out of him gently. Arkady winced and then laughed at himself a little--he'd wanted to be sore, sometime back in the middle of that, and he was certainly going to get his wish.

Aral shifted away from him, pushing gently to make Arkady shift up. Arkady peeled himself away from the table and pushed up on one elbow and then pulled his pants up before resting one hip gingerly against the edge of the table. There was no point in cleaning up other than making sure he didn't look too disheveled for his trip down two levels to his own quarters; he was only going to shower and collapse, not necessarily in that order.

Aral moved around to lean against the table facing him, a little worried frown wrinkling his forehead as he looked at Arkady. He brushed a hand over Arkady's forehead, running fingers--the clean ones, Arkady trusted--through his hair. 

"Will I pass inspection?" Arkady asked, smiling lazily at Aral, letting Aral see that he'd gotten exactly what he'd wanted.

"Mm," Aral said, flicking his fingers through Arkady's hair again, his frown easing into a smile that reflected Arkady's even if it didn't quite match it. Aral leaned in to kiss him softly. "From ten meters on a trotting horse, yes."

"Shame there aren't any horses aboard, then," Arkady said, pushing up for another kiss, as soft and sweet as nothing before this had been. They stayed there, kissing drowsily, until it struck Arkady all over again and he pulled back to just stare at Aral. 

Aral raised his eyebrows and looked steadily back. Arkady shook his head. "I've never watched anyone win a war before."

"Well," Aral said, and pushed in to kiss him again. "I shall be sure to invite you every time I fight one in the future, if it pleases you so much."

Arkady laughed helplessly against his mouth, distantly aware that it was the last aftershock of the day's overload of adrenaline, even as Aral grumbled cheerfully at him and finished setting him to rights before escorting him firmly to the door. "Good night, Lieutenant."

"Good night," Arkady said, managing to tamp it down to merely a beaming smile as he opened the door and returned to the public sphere of officers' country. "Sir."

* * *

Arkady was watching Aral's face when the doors of Aral's office slid back and Miles swaggered in, spouting cheerful backchat in a sharper version of Cordelia's accent. Arkady saw the tears spring to Aral's eyes, the way he all but lunged to meet Miles halfway, pulling him into a hug that looked in danger of being literally bone-crushing.

Miles looked well, even inside the strain of that embrace--figurative as well as literal worlds away from Arkady's last sight of him, under arrest in Simon Illyan's office, pale with fatigue and frostbite. He had changed his Barrayaran uniform for the grey one of the mercenaries he was undercover with, and he returned Aral's embrace strongly, a wild grin just visible on his face where it was pressed to Aral's tunic. He wasn't just unharmed; from the look of him, his unexpectedly prolonged assignment, and surviving a space battle-- _not_ his first, unlike Arkady and the Emperor--had done him good.

It was only when Aral and Miles separated, beaming at each other, that Arkady remembered himself and turned his attention to Lieutenant Yegorov. Aral was going to require his privacy to speak to Miles. 

His eye went to the other person in the room, but he recognized Elena from Aral's briefings on all the secret and semi-secret identities in play, to say nothing of the handful of holos of her on display at Vorkosigan House. She was properly family, and Arkady made no attempt to budge her while he was herding Yegorov out of the office. 

Arkady took one last look back as he stepped through the door and caught Miles looking back at him, entirely missing the look of open, unabashed joy on Aral's face. Arkady couldn't imagine how anyone could look away from that if it were directed at them, though he supposed Miles must have a native immunity. He headed to the outer office and draped himself over a chair--a little gingerly, still, as long as no one was watching--and he tipped his head back and let the last knot of his long-carried fear uncoil. Aral had Miles back, and Gregor, and the war was won; the rest was only cleanup. They were going home. Arkady might as well have his feet on solid ground already.


End file.
